The Last Days of Cherri
by Jared Wasserman
Summary: My entry for the Battlecon: Unleashed kickstarter's social goals.


"Damn you Zaamassal!" Luc shouted at him, running as fast as he could to catch the former Planestalker. Luc's temporal battery was drained, forcing him to pull speed and strength from his own adrenaline. "We took you in! We made you part of our family! And you chose to doom us all!" Zaamassal glanced away, unable to bring himself to meet Luc's gaze, a gaze so full of rage and betrayal. To his left, Khadath was knocked out cold. The young blind girl was tucked behind him, her hands holding tightly to Zaamassal's waist. Her mind was an unfocused mess when Zaamassal had found her. Now she gripped to the only person who has shown her a way out of her nightmares.

Zaamassal's eyes glowed brightly and with determination, a sharp contrast to Cherri's empty and terrified gaze, "Get to the portal Cherri, now! I'm getting us out of here!" He turned and swiped at the air behind them, the fabric of reality twisted, like a funhouse mirror, just in time to redirect a bolt of Luc's temporal electricity away from them before snapping reality back to normal.

The two ran towards a large rock wall, seemingly a deadend. Zaamassal's eyes glowed brightly and the rock appeared to split, but it wasn't the rock splitting. A planar rift opened before the pair and Zaamassal pulled them both inside.

"No!" The echo of Luc's final words to Zaamassal followed him as the planar rift closed in front of him, "By the gods, damn you!"

* * *

The rift closed behind Zaamassal and Cherri, depositing them in a dimly lit cavern. The walls were the same rock structure as the outside wall, with large columns carved directly from the cave itself. Book shelves were strewn about in a disorganized design. Racks filled with weapons and musical instruments were nailed into the cavern walls.

Cherri reached her hands out to feel the surfaces around her, "It's…it's so quiet here," she whispered. "We're alone now," Zaamassal said, "We weren't followed through the rift."

"No…I mean it's so quiet. I don't hear the whispers…"

"Ah, this is a demi-plane. It's warded and hidden from the rest of the planes. My mistress taught me how to build it."

"Your mistress…she's the one you said can help me? She's the one who can make the whispers stop permanently?"

"That's right." Zaamassal's tone went cold at the mention of his mistress. He sat down on a rock and began unclipping his armor and cleaning his weapons, "We'll stay here until she's ready for us. Until then, I need you to stay quiet and don't touch anything."

Cherri flinched back, the tone in Zaamassal's voice a bit harsher than he might've intended. Despite his command, Cherri tilted her head and slid her hands across the floor, trying to build an image in her head of her surroundings.

Her hand came across a book that had fallen off of one of the shelves. Her fingers wrapped around it and lifted it, turning to show it towards the sound of Zaamassal running a whetstone over his blades.

"What's this one called?"

"I thought I told you not to…" Zaamassal choked up slightly at the small book Cherri held. "That's… _The Faraway Places,"_

"Hmm…I don't think I've ever heard of that one. Who's it by? When I was younger, I loved reading so much. I would read everything I could get my hands on!"

"It's…by me. They're poems I wrote. A long time ago…"

Cherri let out a gasp of excitement, "You wrote it!? Oh please, would you read me some? Please?" Cherri crawled over to Zaamassal, holding the book tight in her hand.

"I don't…alright." Zaamassal took the book from her hands and waited for her to find a comfortable spot on the ground, her ears tilted up towards him. He opened the book to the first poem and began to read what felt like a completely different life. "Whence we see the barren trees, and know the souls they hold. The lives of strength and vigor stripped forever from their boughs."

"Their roots the claws of damned remains, locked tight in profane ash. The maggots feast on poison seeping from its barken gash,"

Zaamassal stopped and looked up at Cherri in shock, "I thought you said you've never heard this before?"

"I haven't…but I have heard that poem…I've heard it whispered by the voices. They speak how well it captures places forever lost.

Zaamassal gave a smirk. At least someone, somewhere liked his work. He continued reading. They had been at it for nearly two hours when the cavern began to change. The temperature dropped and the shadows began to twist in impossible ways. From the ceiling, a globe of light appeared and began to expand to fill the room. In an instant, the cavern melted away, the pair being transported to the realm of chaos. "She has arrived," Zaamassal whispered, as he twisted reality to form a tiny pocket of space to fit himself into.

* * *

"Zaamassal, what's going on? Where are you?"

He watched as the light grew brighter around Cherri's body, the infinite chaos congealing into a physical form. It circled her, brushing against her as if tasting what she was. The touch of chaos on flesh burned, eliciting a whimper and recoil from Cherri. She could hear so much, the voices returned, the screams of infinite beings everywhere, all demanding her to act, to remain still, to scream, to be silent, all at once.

"I'm scared, Zaamassal…"

The chaos quivered, as if realizing what she was, what it had wanted. The light doubled in intensity, and wrapped itself around Cherri's limbs. She screamed. Her limbs were experiencing a million different existences at the same time. The voices called to her again, to live, to die, to resist, to give in.

"Zaamassal please help me!"

The chaos formed itself upwards, growing before Cherri into the shape of a gelatinous creature, the upper body that of a woman with three eyes. Its hands shaped into enormous black hooks. The light its body now exuded was so bright it dwarfed all but the mightiest of stars imaginable. With a scream not possible by any mortal mouth, the woman lashed down, piercing the hooks into Cherri's chest and ripped her open. The literal lifeblood of the Prime World burst forth from Cherri's body, and what remained of her insides resembled not flesh, but instead a broken mirror, each shard reflecting a location on Indines. Cherri could only scream at that point, her soul being drained from her body and the secret of her being laid bare. The chaos entity before her twisted in impossible ways, splitting off dozens of appendages from its oozing body and thrust them into Cherri, one into each of the planar-shards.

"Zaamassal!"

With her last moment of existence, she stretched out her thoughts in search of Zaamassal, panicking and grasping desperately for even a shred of his being to know he was there. Her soul was being torn apart, scattered across an infinite reality. In the instant Cherri Seneca faded away, she touched Zaamassal one last time and heard his thoughts.

 _What have I done…_


End file.
